Just Another Bookworm

I received my copy through Goodreads' First Reads program.

I have read more than my fair share of both good and bad science fiction, and Pannone's Eviction Earth falls straight into the latter category for me. The author had a great plot line going in the beginning, but his cookie-cutter characters, lack of plot development, and gross misuse of grammar and punctuation had me rooting for the asteroid just so the book would end.

The first real problem I had with this novel was character development, a major factor in the success of a work of fiction. The reader wants a memorable cast of characters to keep the book exciting and enjoyable. I just did not find that here. The main protagonist, Kal, is nothing special. An ex-college football player turned disability case after a motorcycle accident is not very intriguing, nor does he possess any higher mental faculties to make him and his family worthy of such awesome adventures as they face. There is little back story and Kal and his family turn out to be just as boring as can be. The reader gets next to no insight into their minds, thought processes, or personalities, making them as two-dimensional as the words on the page.

Secondly, the plot development was severely lacking all through this novel. I admire the twists and turns, but the author crammed far too much plot in a relatively short novel and therefore did not do justice to what could have been a very exciting plot. The characters bounce from one situation to the next so quickly there is rarely enough time for Pannone to thoroughly and successfully harness and convey the situation to the reader. It also leaves much to be desired when it come to the life and world of the underground dwellers. The book ends very abruptly and, in my opinion, does not successfully conclude the story. I was dying to know about their years underground, but had to settle for my own theories. Another one hundred pages would have done this novel a world of good.

Lastly, the author's errors in grammar and punctuation were numerous. It appeared the first half of the book that perhaps the author was unaware of what a comma was. That idea was thrown out the window in the second half, where they were thrown in seemingly at random, though still rarely. Pannone also seems to have an issue with homophones. I laughed out loud each time I read that one who has betrayed his people is a "trader". I also caught an instance or two of using "than" rather than "then". Maybe another read-through before publication would have been a good idea... I strongly recommend an editor for his next novel. The dialogue was also consistently cheesy and childish- not at all the adult-caliber talk one expects from a novel meant for an older crowd.

Overall, disappointed by this one, but the last half proved that the author did have a good idea, just perhaps not the patience or ability to convey it to the rest of us. For that, I give Eviction Earth two out of five stars.